Our Time on Earth exhibition—A role for art in addressing climate change
Authors: Daniel Skyle
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2022)

Daniel Skyle reflects on an art exhibition at the Barbican, in London, for the Lancet Planetary Health.It can be hard to feel hopeful in the face of climate change. Decades of reports predicting and then cataloguing climate related crises, combined with an inadequate policy response, have left many people with feelings of concern and even hopelessness, something broadly termed climate anxiety. We now have a great deal of data—but how can we create more hope to fuel climate action? Perhaps art can lead the way.Over the past two decades, a growing number of artists have begun to focus their efforts on climate change. This summer, the Barbican Centre, in London, hosted Our Time on Earth, an art exhibition focusing on how we can build a sense of hope and unity around climate change, featuring 18 artists and 12 new commissions. The main exhibition was in the Curve Gallery and in the Pit Theatre, with free exhibits spread across the Barbican.Our Time on Earth was curated for The Barbican by guest curators Caroline Till and Kate Franklin. It closed on 29 Aug, but highlights from it can be seen on Youtube. As you enter the exhibition, everything becomes dark. Then, on your left, the first exhibit, a tree in the Amazon as seen through several layers of functions and networks, digitalised into a four-metre tall, colourful video. The tree was fascinating and is perhaps the piece that made the most lasting impression on me.As you thread your way deeper into the darkness light comes back, and there is a strong aural component throughout the exhibition: this has a futuristic feel, as if you have stepped into the film Bladerunner. Female computer avatar voices surround you, and many exhibits are competing with voices, tones, and audio loops. The word “soundscapes” is used frequently in the exhibition materials, however in the smaller spaces the noises sometimes compete to a degree that it becomes quite distracting.There is a long wooden table lined with wooden stools, where all species are invited to sit to help counter climate change. Another exhibit shows constructed images of future rainforest cities, shot through with roots from giant trees with walkways built from creepers with tiny humans walking among them. There is a multimedia installation with anti-capitalist messages, “It is nature that is in command” and “Yes, we are all wild”, and in another room, cloth scrolls hang from the ceiling down to the floor so that visitors have to weave among them as they read messages like “Reforesting Mind” and “We are the Earth”.As you move deeper into the Curve Gallery, one artist has created a future in which Earth has only one city, one city with 10 billion inhabitants to help spare the rest of the planet from the damage that humans create. He has included quite detailed numbers of objects and beings in this 10 billion citizen city: 4 314 543 bicycles. 245 082 deaths a day. 342 465 700 fish. He has also designed the costumes we might be wearing, a blend of tribal and futuristic design for “a world where identity is fluid”.There is background birdsong, TV screens with video interviews from climate change projects globally, and interviews with indigenous people; there are exhibits that describe areas of land that could be protected from humans, and ideas that could help minimise climate footprints, such as mycelium bricks. One of the designers of mycelium bricks interviewed in a video on Youtube say the bricks function very well, that they can be used now, and should be scalable for global use in 200 years.In the Pit Theatre in the belly of the Barbican, one exhibit is interactive video. A brave visitor steps up from our ranks and stands nervously laughing in front of a big projection of a sea, and finally the video starts: suddenly we are plunged into the depths of the ocean. It is very well made, this dive, but as we reach deeper levels the interactive experience becomes quite simplified, with digitised plankton swimming at mega size in the sea. The exhibit highlights plankton and their function in the marine ecosystem, and is supplemented with information texts on various species of plankton in the seas, and how important they are to marine life.While going through the exhibition, I take the chance to interview some visitors about their views. The overwhelming message they relay is one of hope; “I felt a great sense of hope from this,” said one visitor. “It usually all feels so hopeless on climate change, but this exhibition gave me back a sense of hope that things might actually be improved,” enthused another.In recent years, studies have begun to investigate the effects of climate anxiety and how we might be able to counter it. In 2021, the American Psychological Association published a guideline on Mental Health and our Changing Climate Impact, and an article by Hickman and colleagues published in 2021 surveyed 10 000 children and young people (aged 16–25 years) in ten countries, and found that “Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried). More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change.”Studies have also begun researching the effect of art on people's engagement with climate action, and how it might contribute to the climate change narrative. For example a 2018 study, Raising the Temperature: the arts on a warming planet by Galafassi and colleagues argues that, “The creation of personal meaning usually involves more than the cognitive aspects of climate change. It requires the inclusion of ethical, affective, and aesthetic knowledges, which affect how we interpret and assign value to certain aspects of our life”. In her 2020 article “Learning about climate change in, with and through art”, Bentz notes that their study found an increasing number of artworks, projects, and networks on climate-related arts, especially over the last decade, and adds that “These cultural and creative engagements suggest the potential of the arts to inspire and open up multiple ways of engaging large amounts of people with.”Climate change art has become its own genre, and high-profile artists have added their names to it; Banksy in 2009, and again supporting Extinction Rebellion, the global environmental movement, in 2019. Ai Wei Wei put up a 32-metre-tall tropical tree made of iron in the Portuguese city of Porto in 2021, an artwork he hoped would raise awareness of the devastating consequences of deforestation. The art world has also increasingly seen discussions on how to deal with their own carbon footprint from global travel, a side-effect of international art exhibitions and biennales across the planet.Despite the growth in climate change related art, climate art exhibitions remain relatively few and are rendered almost invisible among the very large volume of scientific and scholarly works addressing the topic online. Those art works that there are, have tended to focus on the dangers of climate change, the challenges, the potential dystopian futures. Far fewer focus on how to create inspiration and hope for us as we head deeper into climate change, something that many visitors to the Our Time on Earth exhibition benefited from. It seems clear to me that art has an important role to play in visualising a future where we don't just avoid some climate damages but can strive towards a hopeful creative future. Daniel Skyle reflects on an art exhibition at the Barbican, in London, for the Lancet Planetary Health. It can be hard to feel hopeful in the face of climate change. Decades of reports predicting and then cataloguing climate related crises, combined with an inadequate policy response, have left many people with feelings of concern and even hopelessness, something broadly termed climate anxiety. We now have a great deal of data—but how can we create more hope to fuel climate action? Perhaps art can lead the way. Over the past two decades, a growing number of artists have begun to focus their efforts on climate change. This summer, the Barbican Centre, in London, hosted Our Time on Earth, an art exhibition focusing on how we can build a sense of hope and unity around climate change, featuring 18 artists and 12 new commissions. The main exhibition was in the Curve Gallery and in the Pit Theatre, with free exhibits spread across the Barbican. Our Time on Earth was curated for The Barbican by guest curators Caroline Till and Kate Franklin. It closed on 29 Aug, but highlights from it can be seen on Youtube. As you enter the exhibition, everything becomes dark. Then, on your left, the first exhibit, a tree in the Amazon as seen through several layers of functions and networks, digitalised into a four-metre tall, colourful video. The tree was fascinating and is perhaps the piece that made the most lasting impression on me. As you thread your way deeper into the darkness light comes back, and there is a strong aural component throughout the exhibition: this has a futuristic feel, as if you have stepped into the film Bladerunner. Female computer avatar voices surround you, and many exhibits are competing with voices, tones, and audio loops. The word “soundscapes” is used frequently in the exhibition materials, however in the smaller spaces the noises sometimes compete to a degree that it becomes quite distracting. There is a long wooden table lined with wooden stools, where all species are invited to sit to help counter climate change. Another exhibit shows constructed images of future rainforest cities, shot through with roots from giant trees with walkways built from creepers with tiny humans walking among them. There is a multimedia installation with anti-capitalist messages, “It is nature that is in command” and “Yes, we are all wild”, and in another room, cloth scrolls hang from the ceiling down to the floor so that visitors have to weave among them as they read messages like “Reforesting Mind” and “We are the Earth”. As you move deeper into the Curve Gallery, one artist has created a future in which Earth has only one city, one city with 10 billion inhabitants to help spare the rest of the planet from the damage that humans create. He has included quite detailed numbers of objects and beings in this 10 billion citizen city: 4 314 543 bicycles. 245 082 deaths a day. 342 465 700 fish. He has also designed the costumes we might be wearing, a blend of tribal and futuristic design for “a world where identity is fluid”. There is background birdsong, TV screens with video interviews from climate change projects globally, and interviews with indigenous people; there are exhibits that describe areas of land that could be protected from humans, and ideas that could help minimise climate footprints, such as mycelium bricks. One of the designers of mycelium bricks interviewed in a video on Youtube say the bricks function very well, that they can be used now, and should be scalable for global use in 200 years. In the Pit Theatre in the belly of the Barbican, one exhibit is interactive video. A brave visitor steps up from our ranks and stands nervously laughing in front of a big projection of a sea, and finally the video starts: suddenly we are plunged into the depths of the ocean. It is very well made, this dive, but as we reach deeper levels the interactive experience becomes quite simplified, with digitised plankton swimming at mega size in the sea. The exhibit highlights plankton and their function in the marine ecosystem, and is supplemented with information texts on various species of plankton in the seas, and how important they are to marine life. While going through the exhibition, I take the chance to interview some visitors about their views. The overwhelming message they relay is one of hope; “I felt a great sense of hope from this,” said one visitor. “It usually all feels so hopeless on climate change, but this exhibition gave me back a sense of hope that things might actually be improved,” enthused another. In recent years, studies have begun to investigate the effects of climate anxiety and how we might be able to counter it. In 2021, the American Psychological Association published a guideline on Mental Health and our Changing Climate Impact, and an article by Hickman and colleagues published in 2021 surveyed 10 000 children and young people (aged 16–25 years) in ten countries, and found that “Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried). More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change.” Studies have also begun researching the effect of art on people's engagement with climate action, and how it might contribute to the climate change narrative. For example a 2018 study, Raising the Temperature: the arts on a warming planet by Galafassi and colleagues argues that, “The creation of personal meaning usually involves more than the cognitive aspects of climate change. It requires the inclusion of ethical, affective, and aesthetic knowledges, which affect how we interpret and assign value to certain aspects of our life”. In her 2020 article “Learning about climate change in, with and through art”, Bentz notes that their study found an increasing number of artworks, projects, and networks on climate-related arts, especially over the last decade, and adds that “These cultural and creative engagements suggest the potential of the arts to inspire and open up multiple ways of engaging large amounts of people with.” Climate change art has become its own genre, and high-profile artists have added their names to it; Banksy in 2009, and again supporting Extinction Rebellion, the global environmental movement, in 2019. Ai Wei Wei put up a 32-metre-tall tropical tree made of iron in the Portuguese city of Porto in 2021, an artwork he hoped would raise awareness of the devastating consequences of deforestation. The art world has also increasingly seen discussions on how to deal with their own carbon footprint from global travel, a side-effect of international art exhibitions and biennales across the planet. Despite the growth in climate change related art, climate art exhibitions remain relatively few and are rendered almost invisible among the very large volume of scientific and scholarly works addressing the topic online. Those art works that there are, have tended to focus on the dangers of climate change, the challenges, the potential dystopian futures. Far fewer focus on how to create inspiration and hope for us as we head deeper into climate change, something that many visitors to the Our Time on Earth exhibition benefited from. It seems clear to me that art has an important role to play in visualising a future where we don't just avoid some climate damages but can strive towards a hopeful creative future.